This Is Not a Test: A Novel

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This book is for David Summers.

It is not my expectation to change the world. I want to change my life.

I love and miss you, Dad.

Lily,

I woke up and the last piece of my heart disappeared.

I opened my eyes and I felt it go.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub and run the fingernail of my thumb up the inside of my wrist. I trace a vein until it pitchforks out and disappears under the fleshiest part of my palm. Lily couldn’t sleep; a few weeks before she left, she had all these pills to help her do that. I didn’t know why at the time but now I think her guilt was probably keeping her up at night. When I searched her bedroom earlier, I couldn’t find them, which is too bad. I was counting on it. Her. I should know better. It just seemed like maybe the stars would align for this—that the day I decided to die, everything would go right. But they didn’t and now I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Three sharp raps on the bathroom door—onetwothree—stop me breathing. I look up from my wrist. I didn’t hear his footsteps. I never hear them when it matters anymore, but I hear them now, retreating down the hall. I wait a few minutes before leaving the bathroom and then I walk the same path downstairs he did. His cologne soaks the air, musky and cheap, and the scent is so heavy in my lungs it makes me want to tear my skin off. It’s stronger the closer I get to the kitchen and mingles with a more bitter scent: burnt toast. He burned the toast. He only does that when he thinks I deserve it. I check my watch.

I am five minutes late for breakfast.

Early morning light streams in through the window above the sink. Everything it touches turns gold. Everything looks golden, but it all feels so gray. An envelope sits next to my plate of (burnt) toast. I pick it up and run my fingers along the edge of it as my father explains it’s for the school, about my absence. His cover. This is what we are going to tell them kept me home for so long: I had that flu that’s going around. Do I understand? I had the flu.

He says, Let me get a look at your face.

I tilt my chin up. It’s not good enough. In one swift motion, he reaches across the table and I flinch away before I can stop myself. He exhales impatiently, takes my chin in his hand, and turns it roughly toward the light. I keep my eyes on the envelope, like I could turn it into a letter from Lily just by looking at it. A letter that says, hey, I’m coming back for you tonight. I used to read the actual note she left me over and over again and I’d pretend those words were coded between the ones that said I’m so sorry and I can’t do this anymore.

He lets go of my chin.

Things got worse after you left.

How it is now: my father’s face, buried in the newspaper. My mother buried six feet underground. My sister, Lily, gone. Two charred pieces of toast set out before me. I forgot the butter, left it on the counter next to the fridge. I want it badly, but once I’m at the table, I’m not allowed to leave until my plate is clean.

Mornings like this, I remember that one and only sleepover at Grace Casper’s house. Waking up with her the next day, scampering downstairs before we were even dressed. The radio blared the news and her mother and father raised their voices over it to be heard. They had an entire conversation this way. Her brother, Trace, turned the TV on over the radio—it was so much noise—and I was too overwhelmed to eat and no one got mad at me for it. Grace said she could tell by the look on my face it was different at my place and she asked me what it was like and I lied to her. I said it was the same, just slightly quieter.

What it really is is silent except for the clock ticking on the wall, reminding me I have only three minutes left to eat. My father flips to the classifieds. Two minutes. Past them. One minute. Folds the paper. Time. He peers at me and the still uneaten toast.

You better eat that, he says.

The edge in his voice closes my throat. I pick at a snag in my fingernail and peel it sideways, trying to open my airways by distracting my body with new pain. Blood prickles at the corner of my thumb but it doesn’t work, I still can’t swallow, so I start to pray instead. I pray for something, anything to happen so I don’t have to eat this toast because I can’t eat this toast. I wasn’t raised to believe in God but Lily is gone and I’m all that’s left and I never ask for anything. Maybe that counts for something.

But what if— The words die as soon as they leave my mouth. I’m not…

He stares at me.

If I’m not—what if I’m not … hungry…

You know we don’t waste food in this house.

And then, something:

Our front door starts to rattle and shake.

My father lowers the paper slightly.

HELP! Help us, please—

The sound sends shock waves through the room. A girl, screaming. The door continues to rattle, the doorknob turns frantically left and right. I stand before I realize what I’m doing. I stand before my plate is clear. The pounding stops as abruptly as it started but I heard it, I know I did. There was a girl out there. She needs help.

Sit down, my father says.

But—

Now.

I sit. My father slaps the paper onto the table and nods sharply at my plate, which is as good as telling me it better be empty when he comes back. He leaves the room to investigate, swearing under his breath, but before he does I think I see him hesitate and I have never seen him hesitate in my life. I stare at the toast and forget about the girl because it doesn’t matter what’s happening outside. I have to eat. I can’t eat. I hurry across the kitchen. I dump the toast in the garbage and cover it with a crumpled napkin and then I throw myself back into my seat and try to look normal, calm. If he sees what I’ve done on my face, his face will purple. His lips will thin. He’ll say, we have to talk about this now. But we won’t. Talk, that is.

Times like these, I need Lily. Whenever I’m about to get in trouble, Lily is (was) the one who reminds (reminded) me to breathe. I try to imagine her next to me, whispering in my ear, but it doesn’t work because now whenever I think of her, I think of her six months ago, slipping that letter under my door, slipping out of the house, slipping into the beat-up old Volkswagen she bought when she was sixteen, slipping out of my life. I wonder where she ran to, where she’s hiding. If our money’s gone. If she’s spent it all by now.

Now I’m leaving too.

The sound of sirens closes in on our street. I want to look out the window but if he finds me at the window that would be bad. The front door slams shut. Dad storms into the room and I jump from my chair so fast it goes flying into the cupboards. I lose myself in endless apologies—I’m sorry, I couldn’t eat it, I know it’s a waste, I’m so sorry—but he’s screaming over me and his voice is so loud and so panicked at first I can’t understand a word he’s saying.

And there’s blood on him.

—go, we have to go!—

I see the blood and my head is full of snapshots: the coffee table. My head against it. Blood in my hair. The floor mashed against my face. My teeth mashed against my lips. Later, more bruises than I could count. I don’t know what he’s done this time, what’s happened, but I don’t want to be part of it. I push past my father and rush down the hall to the front door. I struggle with the chain lock. Slide it out of place. I pull the door open and—

Tires squealing against the pavement.

People running directionless.

Screaming.

This must be a dream. I must not be awake. Or I’m awake and someone ruined our tidy, quiet street while we were sleeping. Broken glass. Doors flung wide open. Cars parked and running with no one inside of them. An alarm sounds nearby. Smoke billows out the window of a house down the street. Mr. North’s house. A police car is parked haphazardly on his lawn, its lights flashing. A fire. That must be what’s happened except I can’t understand why this would turn everyone to panic.

Everyone is panicking.

People rush by. They don’t even look at me. A loud crack makes me jump but I can’t source the sound. Another scream. A group of people run down the road, so frenzied their movements are jerky and uncontrolled. I watch one of them fall, a man. The others surround him, they’re so desperate to pull him to his feet they overwhelm him and I can’t tell where he stops and they begin.

A car careens past and takes out our mailbox but it keeps going. I take a few dumb steps down the walk and spot a woman staggering awkwardly across our lawn. Is this the girl that needed help? She is covered in red, half hunched over, her arms reaching for someone I can’t see. I don’t know who she is, but I call out to her; I want to know if the blood on my father is hers. She somehow hears me over all the other noises and turns her head in my direction at the same time my father grabs me and yanks me back inside, throwing me into the foyer. I hit the wall as he slams the door shut—in the woman’s face. I glimpse a crimson-stained mouth just before the sound of her body colliding against the wood fills the house. My father takes me by the arm and drags me down the hall. He walks so fast, I can’t keep up. I trip and land on my knees. He whirls around. I cover my face with my hands instinctively but he hoists me to my feet and drags me toward the door to the rec room—

An awful sound explodes from the living room.

Our picture window breaking into a thousand pieces.

He lets me go and doubles back. "Get in the rec room, Sloane, and don’t move!"

Get in the rec room. Move. Don’t move. Move. I crawl after him, crawl until I see the living room carpet glittering in the sunlight. Glass is everywhere. I watch the woman who was on our lawn writhe through our window, oblivious to the leftover shards and blades of it digging into her legs and hands. She streaks blood on the white sill and as soon as she’s through, steadies herself on our pale yellow couch. She leaves a red handprint in her wake. She doesn’t even look like she knows where she is. She pauses, rolls her shoulders and inhales. The air rattles through her lungs and makes me breathless. Her head jerks left to right, left to right, left to right before stopping abruptly. She looks at us, takes us in.

She lunges.

It’s easy for my father to overpower her. Because she’s nothing, she’s small, he pins her by the neck with one hand and, with the other, gropes around for something to defend himself with. She gnashes her teeth and claws at his arms so hard she breaks skin, makes him bleed, and the blood makes her wild. She twists her head toward it. My father finds a large piece of broken glass and raises it above him.

He thrusts it into her chest.

And then he does it again.

Again.

The woman doesn’t realize she’s supposed to be dying. It’s like she’s becoming more alive, stronger each time the glass is forced into her. She fights to free herself against my father’s waning grip and he stabs blindly until finally, desperately, he drives the glass into her left eye and the woman stops moving.

She’s stopped moving.

He stares at her body and sits there, drenched in someone else’s life, and he looks so calm, like he knew this was coming, like the way this morning started it was only ever going to end up like this. The room starts to spin.

Sloane, he says.

I find my way to my feet and back into the hall, knocking into the end table where we keep the phone. It clatters to the floor. The sound of the dial tone steadies me, rights the earth.

Sloane—

I push through the front door again and I keep moving until I reach the sidewalk. I’m just in time to see two cars meet in the middle of my street but not in time to get between them. The raw crunch of metal sends me reeling back and puts everything on pause for one brief, critical moment where I edge around the wreckage and try to focus on one thing that makes sense. This: Mr. Jenkins is spread-eagle on his lawn, in his housecoat. He’s twitching. Mrs. Jenkins is kneeling over him. She rips his shirt wide open. Heart attack, I think. Mr. Jenkins has a bad heart. She’s giving him CPR.

Except that’s not what it is at all.

Mrs. Jenkins’s determined fingers have torn past the material of Mr. Jenkins’s shirt.

And now they are tearing into his chest.

PART ONE

SEVEN DAYS LATER

"Get the door! Get the tables against the fucking door, Trace—move!"

In a perfect world, I’m spinning out. I’m seven days ago, sleeping myself into nothingness. Every breath in and out is shallower than the last until, eventually, I stop. In a perfect world, I’m over. I’m dead. But in this world, Lily took the pills with her and I’m still alive. I’m climbing onstage before Cary notices and gives me something to do even though I should be doing something. I should help. I should be helping because seconds are critical. He said this over and over while we ran down streets, through alleys, watched the community center fall, hid out in empty houses and he was right—seconds are critical.

You can lose everything in seconds.

Harrison, Grace, take the front! Rhys, I need you in the halls with me—

I slip past the curtain. I smell death. It’s all over me but it’s not me, not yet. I am not dead yet. I run my hands over my body, feeling for something that doesn’t belong. We were one street away and they came in at all sides with their arms out, their hands reaching for me with the kind of sharp-teethed hunger that makes a person—them. Cary pulled me away before I could have it, but I thought—I thought I felt something, maybe—

Sloane? Where’s Sloane?

I can’t reach far enough behind my back.

Rhys, the halls—

Where is she?

"We have to get in the halls now!"

"Sloane? Sloane!"

I look up. Boxy forms loom overhead, weird and ominous. Stage lights. And I don’t know why but I dig my cell phone out of my pocket and I dial Lily. If this is it, I want her to know. I want her to hear it. Except her number doesn’t work anymore, hasn’t worked since she left, and I don’t know how I forgot that. I can’t believe I forgot that. Instead of Lily, that woman’s voice is in my ear: Listen closely. She sounds familiar, like someone’s mother. Not my mother. I was young when she died. Lily was older. Car accident …

Sloane! Rhys pushes the curtain back and spots me. I drop the phone. It clatters to the floor. What the hell are you doing? We’ve got to move— He takes in the look on my face and his turns to ash. Are you bit? Did you get bitten?

I don’t know— I unbutton my shirt and pull it off and I know he sees all of me before I can turn away, but I don’t care. I have to know. I can’t see anything—I can’t feel it—

Rhys runs his hands over my back, searching for telltale marks. He murmurs prayers under his breath while I hold mine.

It’s okay—you’re good—you’re fine—you’re alive—

The noises in the auditorium get louder with the frantic scrambling of people who actually want to live, but I’m still.

I’m good, I’m fine.

Are you sure?

I’m sure—now come on—come on, we have to—

Good, fine. I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine. He grabs my arm. I shrug him off and put my shirt back on more slowly than I should. I am fine. I’m alive.

I don’t even know what that means.

Look, we’ve got to get back out there, he says as I do up my buttons. There are three other doors that need to be secured— He grabs my arm and turns me around. Look at me—are you ready? Sloane, are you ready?

I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

SEVEN HOURS LATER

This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell. No, this must be a joke; we are six scared teenagers and our high school is one of the last buildings in Cortege that is still in one piece and I’m not sure I can think of a better or worse place to spend the end of days. It was supposed to be the community center. We went there first like we were told—the town’s designated emergency shelter for the kind of emergencies we were assured would likely never happen—and it was the first place to fall. There were too many of us and too many of them. Somehow, we fought our way from one side of town to the other. In another life, the trip would have taken forty minutes.

In this one, it took seven days.

Listen closely.

The radio crackles the prerecorded voice of that woman at us over and over. We have done everything she has told us to do. We have locked and barricaded all the doors. We have covered the windows so no one can see outside and—more importantly—nothing can see in. Do not draw attention to yourself, the woman says, but if we know anything by now, it’s that. Once you have found a secure location, stay where you are and help will come soon. Cary sits on the stage across from me, waiting for the message to change. It doesn’t.

This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test.

But I think she’s wrong. I think this is a test.

It has to be.

Grace and Trace sit on the floor below. She’s whispering in his ear and he’s nodding to whatever she’s saying and he doesn’t look right. He looks sick. He reaches for his sister’s hand and holds it tightly, pressing his fingers into her skin like he’s making sure she exists. After a while, he feels me looking at him and turns his pale face in my direction. I hold his gaze until the chaos outside breaks my concentration. Outside, where everything is falling, landing and breaking at once. Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises.

This is what it sounds like when the world ends.

I take in the auditorium. The cheery purple and beige walls, the matching banners that hang from the ceiling, the Rams posters (GO RAMS, GO!) taped up all over. It was Cary’s idea to come to the school. After we found the community center overrun, we heard that woman’s voice on the phone. Find a place. He didn’t even hesitate before he said CHS. Cortege High. It was built to be the most distraction-free learning environment in the county, which means maximum windows for minimal view. Strategically placed transoms line the classrooms and halls, save for skylights in the auditorium and gym. Two large windows open up the right side of the second and third floors and overlook the school’s parking lot. They’re covered now.

It’s still happening, Harrison says.

I follow his tearful gaze to the exit just right of the stage. The doors open into the parking lot which bleeds out into the streets of Cortege, a half-dead, half-dying town. They’re locked, the doors. Locked and covered with lunch tables reinforced by desks, thanks to Rhys and me. Every entrance and exit in here is the same. The idea is nothing gets past these barriers we’ve created. We spent the first five hours here putting them up. We’ve spent the last two shaking and quiet, waiting for them to fall.

Of course it’s still happening, Rhys mutters. Why wouldn’t it be?

Cary turns the radio off and eases himself onto the floor. He looks like he has something to say but first he runs his hands through his black hair, letting his eyes travel over each of us. Cary Chen. We followed him for days. Lily used to buy pot from him sometimes and sometimes I wanted to, but I thought that would make English class weird and I don’t know if she always paid in cash.

Listen, I— He sounds sandpaper rough from screaming instructions at us for hours and never once taking a breath. He clears his throat. Phone?

Trace makes a gurgling noise, digs his hand into his pocket, pulls out his cell, and frantically dials a number, but it’s no use. The woman’s voice drones over each desperate push of the buttons, a condensed version of what we’re getting on the radio. I watch the sound work its way into Trace’s bones, his blood. His face turns white and he whips his phone across the room. Nothing works anymore and the things that still do don’t work like they should.

I can’t get through, he says flatly.

Cary picks up the phone.

Give it more time. You will.

Think they’d pick up if I did?

I watch Cary, waiting to see if he’ll defend himself. He doesn’t. He turns the cell phone over and over in his hands and says, Trace, the message is a good thing. I think it means they’re leaving priority signal for emergency workers.

Harrison sniffs. So they can save us?

Yeah. Cary nods. We’ll be saved.

And that’s your expert opinion? Trace asks.

Cary shrugs but he doesn’t look Trace in the eyes, focusing instead on the doors. His expression reveals nothing, but he’s turning the phone in his hands faster now, clumsily.

It just makes sense, he says.

That’s what you said about coming here. That really paid off for me and Grace.

Cary winces.

He got the rest of us here, Rhys says.

There were eight of us, before.

Oh, so I’m here. Hey, Grace! Trace turns to her. "You’re here. We’re here with Cary Chen. He laughs bitterly. You think that means anything to us when—"

Trace, stop. Grace sounds just broken enough that Trace doesn’t take it any further. He frowns, holds out his hand to Cary and says, Give me back my fucking phone.

Cary stares at it like he doesn’t want to give it up, like Trace’s cell phone is an anchor keeping him here but I don’t know why anyone would want to be anchored here.

Now, Trace says.

Cary holds it out and finally looks Trace in the eyes.

I’m sorry, he says, about your parents.

Trace rips the phone from Cary’s grasp.

I close my eyes and imagine this place under totally normal circumstances. We have assemblies here. The principal gives speeches here. We eat in this room at lunch. I imagine a day, any school day, setting up the lunch tables and getting in line, picking from the menu. I can almost smell the food …

But then the noises outside get louder than anything I can imagine. They pump through my veins, speed up my heart, and remind me to be afraid even though I have never stopped being afraid, not since Lily left. I open my eyes at the same time the whole barricade seems to shift. Rhys rushes to it, pushing against the desks and tables until they’re settled again.

What was that? Harrison asks. Why did it—

It’s just the way this desk was—it wasn’t the door—

"It’s the door?"

"It wasn’t the door. Just calm down, Harrison. Jesus."

Harrison starts to cry. He stands in the middle of the room and holds himself because no one else will and it’s the loneliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d go to him, maybe, but I don’t even know Harrison. None of us do. He’s one of those invisible freshmen made even more invisible by the fact he just moved here four weeks ago. Cary had to ask him his name after we found him trapped under a bike with his jeans caught in the spokes.

Things I know about Harrison now: not only is he short and stocky, he also cries. A lot. Grace takes pity on him because she’s better than I’ll ever be. She wraps her arm around him and murmurs gentle-sounding words at him and I watch his sobs slowly turn to gasps that turn into pathetic little hiccups. Everyone else averts their eyes. They find things to do so they don’t have to watch. I watch because I don’t know what else to do. I watch until I can’t anymore. I dig my hand into my pockets. My fingers curl around a crumpled piece of paper.

I take it out and unfold it.

Lily,

Hey.

The voice is quiet, close. I shove the note back in my pocket. Rhys hovers at the edge of the stage. His brown hair sticks up everywhere and his brown eyes are bloodshot. Things I know about Rhys: he’s a senior. Our lockers are across from each other.

He put his hands on me and told me I was okay.

He has a case of water in his arms. He sets it on the stage and holds a bottle out to me. I don’t even ask him where he got it, just rip it from his hands. I remember us huddled around this old birdbath yesterday, yesterday morning. We cupped our palms together and lapped up all the dirty, stagnant water and it tasted so awful but so, so wonderful because we were so desperate and isn’t everything better when you’re desperate? We managed to forget our parched mouths and cracked lips while we secured the school and settled into the last two hours, but now I don’t even know how that’s possible because I am so fucking thirsty. I down the water quickly and then I want more. Rhys hands me another and watches me drink it too. I drink until I feel like the ocean is in my stomach and when I’m done, I’m spent. I curl my knees up to my chin and wrap my arms around them. Rhys gives me a crooked smile.

Still here, he says. We made it.

"Is that water? Trace calls from his side of the room. Is that really water?"

I turn my face to the doors.

Sloane.

I jolt awake, forget where I am for a second.